SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen Star Trek: Into Darkness, yet, you might want to avoid reading the rest of this blog entry.


One of the things that disturbed me most about Star Trek: Into Darkness is that the writers/producers apparently wanted to end the franchise once and for all.  HiSHE gives a good explanation as to what killed any future movies.  I'll call the two problems mentioned in the video as the "immortal blood" and the "super transporter".  These two problems change the dynamics of how things happen that any future Trek movies would look completely different. What production company would want to take the risk of an unpopular not-quote-Trek movie?  These new issues, I feared, would mean the end of the Trek franchise (outside of yet another reboot).

Or would they?

Hey, if I can think of reasonably plausible ways to fix these two problems, then certainly the professionals in Hollywood can do better (and not just pretend it didn't happen, because that would be a giant cop-out).  There might be hope for more movies, yet.

First, lets tackle the "immortal blood" problem.  There are already examples where some miracle cure gets nixed because there are Side-Effects (tm).  It doesn't really matter what that side-effect is, as long as it is sufficient deterrent for anyone else who doesn't want to die.  With zombies being all the current flavor of the month, they could show that Kirk doesn't come completely back, somehow, but is conscious enough to remain Kirk in spirit.  The addition of zombie-like limitations/enhancements could continue with the ongoing physical gags that Kirk endures in the reboot movies.

Another take would be to make the blood less of a cure and more of a postponement.  Like Stark in Iron Man 2, Kirk would need some continuing intervention to remain among the living.  The specter of a countdown hanging over his head could provide many opportunities for character growth in him and in the supporting characters as they grapple with the reality that it's not such a miracle cure after all.

I thought that killing Kirk in the first place was a gutsy move, and I was disappointed to see that they punted and brought him back.  Don't get me wrong, I like the character and was sad to see him go, but the whole "only mostly dead" thing has been done way too much.  Give him a "borrowed time" problem that keeps him on his feet, then put another problem in front of that, preventing Kirk and the gang from healing the first problem completely until later, if ever.  There is plenty of evidence that Star Trek can continue after Kirk.

The "super transporter" problem is a little easier to fix.  There are plenty of episodes in cannon where transporters aren't available for a variety of reasons, though most of them are technical reasons that could be circumvented by the more powerful equipment.  The reboot invents transporters where range, warp speeds, and presumably shields are no longer issues.  That doesn't preclude previously unknown natural phenomenon, better shields, or equipment problems from causing plot mechanism-level limitations.  We see plenty of those kinds of things in cannon.  There's no reason why we can't still find them.

But even those can be overdone, so I have a different idea.  Picture an opening scene:  A technician beams out to a remote, automated outpost to troubleshoot and repair some scientific equipment.  You can get some eye-candy looking at the nebula/star/black hole that the station is studying while the tech is busy re-inserting a loose plug.  He signals that he's ready to go back home (his suit only has so much air, after all), but he's told the system is busy with something of an emergency.

Switch to the Klingon homeworld, where the invasion we were trying to avoid in the 2nd reboot movie is preparing to beam directly to the Federation headquarters in S.F.  The ships glitter out by the hundreds and and ground troops by the thousands as they deploy in their attack, only to glitter back almost immediately.  The Federation's new re-transporter technology acts as a firewall, using transporters all over Earth to send any unauthorized beams right back to where they started.  The Klingons keep trying, causing a transporter-induced stalemate, and at least temporarily removing all the transporters from availability for anyone else, since both sides are trying to send larger and larger numbers.

That means it's up to Kirk, Spock, and the gang to figure out a way to rescue the technician (and all others who are unexpectedly stranded in a bad spot while all the atom-scattering is going on).  There are plenty of opportunities to show how complacency with the new transporters causes all sorts of problems when they are suddenly and unexpectedly unavailable.  You might even have to use space ships, again, to move stuff around.

It would also mean that, as engineers on both sides try to tip the scales, odd things could happen.  Klingons might start showing up in innocuous places as Federation engineers try to siphon them away from the attack.  The Klingons would certainly be trying different things to find the limits of the Federation protection.

I'm not expecting Star Trek 13 to use the plot elements I've mentioned above.  This is simply a way to say "there is hope for more!".